Pilgrim

by Timothy Findley

  For many a rose-lipt maiden

  And many a lightfoot lad…

  That Jung was familiar with A.E. Housman’s poetry was not unusual, given the clientele at the Burghölzli. The English upper classes always brought such poetry with them. It was, for them, a sentimental crutch—a way of dealing with the realities their privileged lives had denied them. Ladies fell back, fainting, into the arms of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti. Gentlemen wept into the pages of Wordsworth, Tennyson and Keats—and positively sobbed into the pages of Housman. Many times, Jung had had to look away, he was so embarrassed. The English! The English! God help the snob-ridden, long-nosed, God-chosen English!

  All this from having sighted a kingfisher.

  In this, you yourself, Carl Gustav, are showing signs of a certain Germanic Aryan superiority to which you have no birthright, the Inquisitor said. You are—and please remember it—Swiss!

  They had finally reached the portico. Jung watched Pilgrim climb the steps and enter the building, followed by the squeaking orderly.

  As Jung himself achieved the upper level, he turned back to look out over the serried tops of the trees towards the mountains. The Zürichsee was not visible. In fact, its absence in the viewable landscape was quite deliberate. In planting the trees that rose between the Clinic and the lake, the founders of the Burghölzli had determined that none of their patients should have access to the sight of water, since too many of them were potential suicides and death by drowning is so easily achieved. But the mountains were there—the heights and the sky and the distant other ranges, grey and purple and misted.

  Kingfisher, Jung was thinking.

  Kingfisher. Visions. Visionary.

  Well, he decided, we shall see.

  3

  It did not take long for the next encounter with the visionary aspect of Pilgrim’s troubled mind.

  Two days later, Jung was walking with Archie Menken on the same path where Pilgrim had knelt in the gravel. They were debating the rift between Freud and Jung, which had begun in the early months of 1912 and was now beginning to widen. In time, it would culminate in a complete schism, but this had not yet occurred. Still, the relationship was greatly strained and it wavered back and forth between tentative attempts at reconciliation and outbursts on Freud’s part of outrage that his appointed deputy—his adopted heir—the crown prince of psychoanalysis should dare to contravene Freud’s universal law that all psychoses rise from a well of sexual repression, sexual frustration and sexual abuse. Jung was deeply troubled. His admiration of Freud was basically unshakable. Nonetheless, he more and more disagreed with him. The more Jung learned—the more he explored—the more he believed that Freud had stumbled.

  “It is the very same as having a life and death struggle with your father,” he told Archie Menken. “There are moments when I cannot bear it. Worst of all, there are moments when—dare I say it?—I resent him to the point of hatred. In some matters, he is simply a tyrant—and that I will not tolerate.”

  Archie Menken shrugged and smiled. “You’re something of a tyrant yourself, C.G.,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Jung granted. “Maybe.” He knew it was true. But genius itself was the tyrant. That was the problem in both his own case and Freud’s.

  They had reached the bench where Jung had sat watching Pilgrim two days earlier and Jung, all at once, pulled Archie Menken by the arm.

  “Look at that,” he said.

  “At what?”

  “That pine tree. There. Do you see what I see?”

  Archie squinted.

  “Possibly,” he said. But he saw nothing unusual.

  Jung approached the tree and bent towards its trunk, supporting himself with one hand.

  “Here,” he said. “This.”

  Archie stepped forward and examined the place at which Jung had gestured.

  Someone had carved the letter T into the bark, and the wound was bleeding resin.

  “Maybe there should be a heart carved round it,” Archie joked.

  “I think not,” said Jung.

  The tone of Jung’s response was so completely serious that Archie Menken gave him a sideways glance.

  “Does it mean something to you?” he asked.

  Jung said: “yes,” though he did not yet know what it really meant. He knew only that Pilgrim had put it there—and knowing that, for the moment, was enough.

  It would be some time before Jung discovered more about Pilgrim’s mark on the tree—and why it had been put there. The explanation lay in yet another volume of Pilgrim’s journals—a story still unread by any eye other than its writer’s.

  4

  I began these journals in part with the notion that I might recapture some of what I have experienced deep in the past, as well as recording what I have experienced day by day in my present life. Sometimes, it has been appropriate to record the past as dreams, since dreams form such an important part of my consciousness. Other times, there is nothing for it but to set things down in the same way I would formulate an academic statement—never a theory (I detest theories!) but a statement of those certainties which I hold to be the centre of all my beliefs—truths and yet more truths. Never anything more and never anything less.

  The story I must attempt to articulate now, however—in spite of its many truths and multiple certainties—is one more suitably told in the fashion of a tale. Indeed, almost in the fashion of a fairy tale. There is something so magical, mysterious and mystical about this story that it might have been conjured by Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm or Charles Perrault.

  Where their tales may be metaphorically true, this one is literally true, drawing as it does on my memories of life as a poor shepherd, and on the scholarship of later times.

  Thus, though akin to what has been spun by greater imaginations than mine, this tale is itself entirely.

  In the hills of the Sierra de Gredos to the northwest of Avila in Castile, there is a river called la Mujer, the Woman. The countryside is dusty and olive green—not drab, but always in need of washing down, of rain. The dust itself has a golden hue, and it lends a patina to everything on which it rests. A man’s hair, a woman’s skirts, the roofs of all the houses and the leaves of all the trees are gilded. The sheep who graze in these hills and the cattle who graze in their valleys are stained with this hue to such a degree that their hides and wool are prized for the making of boots and the weaving of carpets.

  Deep in the Sierra there is a place known as Las Aguas—The Waters. Here, a certain landowner, Pedro de Cepeda, had created a small lake by damming la Mujer with a daub-and-wattle weir so that his sheep, his cattle and his shepherds would have a universal meeting place for the twice-yearly gathering of the flocks and herds, during which the twin ritual of shearing and of slaughter could be organized.

  Those cattle and sheep who were destined for slaughter—mostly steers and ewes—were separated here and driven southward over the mountains to the abattoirs at Riodiaz, from which their meats would go on to grace the tables of Madrid. Both shepherds and cowherds were always somewhat saddened by this gathering of doomed animals, the births of which they had overseen, and the care of which they had assumed over the years. In order to accommodate the sad emotions engendered by these moments, Don Pedro de Cepeda always provided a quantity of wine and music and rode out himself to be with his people.

  Amongst his shepherds, in the year 1533, there was an eighteen-year-old simpleton whose name was Manolo. That he was simple-minded did not in any way prevent him from fulfilling his duties. He was both devoted to the sheep in his care and to the terrain in which they grazed. These hills and valleys were all he had ever known and his experience of life and of the world was limited to the ten-mile radius of the land he inhabited—la tierra dorada—its golden hue and its green shade. He had no memory of his mother. The man who claimed to be his father, having taught the boy everything a simple mind could grasp, had moved on to a neighbouring area—still in the employ of Don P
edro de Cepeda, but entirely separated from his son.

  In the high summer months of July and August, Manolo’s greatest pleasure during the hours of siesta was to swim in the tiny lake at Las Aguas. He would leave his sheep in the shade of a grove of scrub oak and his clothes on the shore, where his dog, Perro, could oversee the care of both. Sometimes Perro would plunge into the waters and swim with Manolo, but he always returned to the bank and to the shade. The heat was so oppressive there was very little motivation to do more than doze.

  Manolo was lanky, long-legged and sinewy. If El Greco, still unborn, had wandered into viewing distance of Manolo at that time, his eye would have fallen on the perfect prize—the very model of his attenuated version of the male physique. Even to the colour of its flesh and the dance-like attitudes it assumed.

  If beauty is a quality unto itself and not dependent on artifice, then it would be fair to say that Manolo was beautiful. So long as he was seen in the context of water or of sleep. In sleep, his busy arms and legs were stilled—while swimming, floating or paddling with Perro and—once ashore—streaming with the long, shining lines of water falling from his frame, he was a masterpiece of elongated proportions that were nothing less than perfect. But once in search of his shirt, his ragged trousers and his sandals, he lost all cohesion—every muscle fighting every other for control of his movements. To say that he was spastic was to understate the case—though he could control his spasms while leaning on his sticks.

  These sticks had been made for him by Don Pedro himself, who saw in the boy such a willingness to stand upright that his appeal was irresistible.

  As for Manolo’s speech, he had a stammer. It began in his brain, where words would flood his need to speak. He sometimes did not have the wit to realize the words were in the wrong order, and this way he would say: want sleep do I. Smiling at Perro, he would add: sleep thou too thou? Now thou thee and I lie down. Yes?

  And so:

  On an afternoon in late July in 1533, Manolo was floating face upwards in the lake when Perro, who had been dozing on the shore, all at once stood up and turned to face the trees in whose shade the sheep were sleeping.

  There had not been a drop of rain for more than two weeks and the golden dust was particularly heavy on the leaves and over the ground. Perro’s coat, as well, was thick with it.

  Was there a wolf?

  A wild dog?

  A thief?

  High above him in the sky, Manolo could see the outstretched wings of a pair of eagles. Or were they buzzards? Had there already been a death—or were the birds merely following the hunting track of whatever was out there, certain that in time it would lead them to a kill? Manolo had known this to happen—that the birds had divined the consequences of a certain pattern in the behaviour of wolves, wild dogs and foxes and followed it through to its inevitable conclusion.

  Amongst the scrub oak there were also fir and pine, plus a modicum of cork and plane trees—these latter, together with some of the pines, rising above the general growth. Their upper branches often played host to flocks of magpies and crows or starlings. Manolo called these trees the Talking Place because of the chattering birds.

  Manolo began to tread water, fixing his gaze—as Perro had done—on the highest branches of the Talking Place, which stood on the rising slopes above the lake.

  A bird—or what appeared to be a bird of gigantic size—was seated there, its wings outstretched as if to grasp the branches for support. Or perhaps to dry them in the sun as a pelican will do, or a buzzard after feeding on offal.

  What could it be?

  No bird on earth was so large or so white or so wide.

  Staring, Manolo stopped treading water and sank.

  Spluttering back to the surface, his eyes streaming and the sun so bright it almost blinded him, he could see now that what he beheld was an angel. For only angels have wings so wide and only angels sit so still.

  Manolo swam to shore, clambered onto the bank and took up his sticks.

  The hair on the ridge of Perro’s back was raised and his tail drooped.

  “Come thee with me,” Manolo whispered, touching the dog’s ears and leading the way upward, beneath the trees.

  In the dappled shade as he hobbled amongst the dozing sheep, Manolo had the look of a creature half-seen, as if the particles of his being were only then forming to become coherent. He stumbled—he flailed—and the sparkling light and the golden shade divided his limbs, his sticks and his torso into segments that were so disjointed he was barely recognizable as human. And beside him, the shadow of his dog seemed to be a part of Manolo that had been shed and was waiting to be redefined. That it moved was a certainty, but what it was could not be told.

  At last—and out of breath—they came to the foot of the tree in which the angel sat. In fact, she gave the appearance more of being entangled in the branches than of sitting amongst them willingly.

  Manolo stared.

  Perro lay down at his feet and was silent.

  The angel’s face was turned towards heaven. Amongst the leaves, she had the look of someone who has gone alone into a great cathedral and while seated there is bathed in the light of stained-glass windows. Manolo had seen this once in Avila, when he was taken there as a child in the hopes that a miracle might occur that would cure him of his palsy. There had been no miracle—but Manolo had been inspired to believe the figures in the windows breathed and had life. They were on fire with light, and shimmered in such a way as to convince him he had seen them move.

  Now, there was an angel.

  Manolo did not speak. It would be improper.

  At last, the angel turned and saw him.

  “Have you come here to pray?” she asked him.

  “No, ma’am. I came thee to see.”

  “Is this your tree?”

  “No, ma’am. The tree its own.”

  “I see.”

  The angel took a firmer grasp of the branches where she was seated.

  “Do you think you could help me get down?” she said.

  “Thee cannot fly?” Manolo asked.

  “No.”

  “Then how thou in the tree?”

  “I can’t explain. It happens—but I can’t explain it.”

  “Happens?”

  “I rise. As you can see, I rise sometimes as far as this—other times, not so far. But it is not my doing. It simply happens.”

  “Does it hurt thee?”

  “No. It makes me dizzy. Then I laugh.”

  “Perro is afraid of thee.”

  “Who is Perro?”

  “My dog. He thought thou were a bird so big thou would fly away with him to eat.”

  “I do not eat dogs—and I cannot fly away. I have no wings.”

  Hearing his name and the tone of the angel’s voice, Perro looked up and began to wag his tail.

  Then the angel said: “the trouble with rising is that one must come down. Have you a ladder, by any chance?”

  “I do not know ladder.”

  “Steps. Stairs. As in houses.”

  “I do not know houses.”

  “Well—I shall try to climb down the branches.”

  So saying, the angel began her descent. First, she had to disentangle her dress from the branches around her—especially her “wings,” her billowing white sleeves.

  Manolo stood back so as not to be in her way and Perro rose and moved behind him. The angel was clumsy and twice she nearly fell, but at last she stood on the earth and shook out her skirts.

  She stared at Manolo frankly and without embarrassment. “You are naked,” she said.

  Manolo said: “I am often naked. There is no one ever here.” The angel smiled. “My name is Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada,” she said. “I have come to La Sierra de Gredos to stay with my uncle Don Pedro, who is my father’s brother.”

  Manolo hobbled to one side and attempted to hide behind a tree. “I should like to return to the water,” he said.

  “The water. Yes. I could see it f
rom the tree. Las Aguas. My uncle told me of it.”

  Teresa led the way.

  “Mind thee the sheep,” Manolo said as they started their descent through the woods. “It is their siesta before they go to graze again.”

  Perro ran ahead, loping between the trees, expertly navigating his way amongst the slumbering sheep and lambs so that none was disturbed.

  As they broke into the open, Teresa stopped in her tracks and, gazing at the man-made lake before her, spread her arms as if she wanted to embrace it. “Oh,” she said, “I have never seen anywhere so beautiful.”

  On the far side of the water, a flight of pelicans was resting on the surface amongst the reeds, their feathers stained with yellow dust.

  “They come for siesta, too,” said Manolo. “And every day ducks, the sheep and Perro and me—we sleep to the song of the cicada. You hear them now?”

  They moved out onto the embankment, where Manolo had earlier scattered his clothes. There was wine there, too—in a skin—and the remnants of bread and cheese, tied in a kerchief. Perro walked into the lake to drink.

  Then Manolo said: “close thou thine eyes. I am afraid for thee to see me when I walk.”

  Teresa covered her face with her hands and said to him: “I am blind.”

  Manolo went to the water’s edge with his sticks where, dropping them, he staggered into the lake and paddled far enough away so that he could stand and yet be covered.

  “Now thou may look thee.”

  But Teresa had already looked. Moving her fingers just enough to provide her with a view of Manolo’s falling stride as he passed, she had seen his back, noting a birthmark there in the shape of a butterfly. She had also seen quite plainly that without the sticks he was all but helpless.

  Dropping her hands, she sat down beside his clothes and asked him how old he was.

  “I be eighteen,” he said. “By count. I can count to one hundred.”

  “May you live so long!”

  A kingfisher flew down from the trees on the opposite shore and skimmed the waters. Blue. Green. Brilliant.

  “That was a messenger from God,” said Teresa. “Did you know that? Pelicans, herons and kingfishers—all are messengers in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Jesus was also a fisherman of men and a shepherd of sheep. Shepherd of God, King Fisher, Lord.”